It's salt in old wounds as I lost more than a few friends in that worthless war and know even more who were never able to function well in society after that war. And I and my family and friends have had to observe and endure what I consider to be a continued devastation and decline of our culture, our country, and our society which originated with that war and those who ran it and has continued to this day.
So I'd question and challenge many of the numbers in that report as well as its attempt to spin the outcome. One thing that war should have taught us well is that we should never accept at face value any numbers that have had the opportunity to be run through the "spin cycle" by politicians and bureaucrats, unformed or otherwise.
While I'd agree that it wasn't the US military's fault that the war was lost, there is no amount of spin that will change the fact that our "side" lost the war . . . period. We quit while it was still going on. That amounts to a forfeit. Spin it any way you want to but we lost.
The spineless draft-dodging politicians and bean-counting bureaucrats who felt that they were ordained and qualified to get us involved in and micro-manage a "police action" which was, in reality, a hellish civil war were responsible for the loss as well as our ill-advised involvement and its disastrous consequences. Unfortunately, they were never held accountable, as they well should have been and still should be.
But the real continuing tragedy seems to be that our politicians (most of whom were successful in DODGING the Vietnam Conflict) didn't seem to learn a thing from history. Perhaps if they'd been there or had at least attended a few history classes while in college we could have avoided the "deja vu" quagmire we're in now. Or maybe they'd at least have allowed a very capable military to finish the mess the politicians started instead of continually firing any top military brass who had the conscience and self-respect to advise against the disastrous scenario that those of us who remember Viet Nam all too well are seeing all over again.
